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Google Wants E-Mail Scanning Information Blocked

Rommel told Koh that Google made the change after determining that Content Onebox couldn’t extract information from e-mails that hadn’t been opened or deleted, or that were opened on an iPhone or sent through an e-mail provider other than Google.

After the switch to scanning unopened e-mails, Google began creating profiles of people “from which they could extrapolate additional advertisements,” Rommel said, without giving details of how Content Onebox works.

“Google itself has admitted and declared that the location and the timing of Content Onebox’s existence is proprietary, it’s secret, it’s unknown,” Rommel said at the Feb. 27 hearing. “There’s not a single disclosure in the record which identifies that there’s a content extraction feature occurring in the delivery process, which would be the interception.”